Part 1

Name: Cold Water
Members: Kevin Stebner (vocals, guitars), Connor HD (bass), John Hadley (guitar, steel), Andrew Hume (drums)
Interviewee: Kevin Stebner
Nationality: Canadian
Recent release: The new Cold Water album Instead, I Am A Golden Oriole is out February 10th 2023 via Grimalkin.
Recommendations: From here in Calgary, I have to alert you to Lucid 44. Truly born in the wrong era, Markus Overland has quietly been amassing an incredible body of work, things he would often release on his own on low-run CDRs, but his work is so good, I had to release his last few on my own cassette label as well. The most affecting contemporary indigenous work I’ve heard, and in general easily my favourite writer from Calgary. Listen here.

And from more eastern territory, the writing of Simone Schmidt and their project Fiver. Not to even mention Simone’s previous projects, and I could easily have picked any of their more recent work (because it’s great!), but I’m heading somewhere in the middle, as I absolutely love the mood, the haunt, of Lost the Plot. Could be my favourite alt-country/neo-folk/whatever album from Canada ever (Even more than The Way I Feel?? Yeah, maybe!). (And the newer ones too!)

If you enjoyed this interview with Kevin Stebner and would like to know more about his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, as is Cold Water.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I started buying in-bands when I was about 14/15 - I had the same old pop-punk bands as the initial foray, but was alerted to the good stuff (Mission of Burma, Husker Du …) by an old local, and that’s what really awoke something in me.

Even more from the audible part of it, it was the DIY aspect of punk and hardcore that was the major part, creating a culture outside of the mainstream, finding out about those scenes, and art culture outside of the established.

It was the vitality and immediacy of bands like that that drew me in, and made me feel like I could contribute in some way.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

To experience synesthesia would be interesting - but I have zero connection to anything visual in terms of music. But that’s actually why I find music so compelling. Because it occurs outside of what I would deem tangible - I can’t touch or feel in that sense - whereas the audible feels etherial to me.

Music has an obvious temporality to it - song are a certain number of minutes, or whatever - but it’s exactly in listening to music that I am unaware of that temporality. Time slips away, especially when playing music live or with the band, it’s hard to gauge while I’m immersed in it.

That though, precisely because I’m in it, in the moment, in the music, is what makes it so compelling to pursue, to exist within it.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

In honesty, the true challenge is continuing despite indifference and lack of “success.” I’ve always had a myriad of projects, be it video game music, punk and hardcore, or psychy alt-country. I don’t know if I’ve had to search for the voice at all. (Mine has always been frail, and searching to hit those notes …) But I’ve always had something to say, an innate lack in the world that I needed to voice, and it’s been the moment I started writing songs.

And to have had the different project to aim them towards has allowed them to come out. Different sides, same coin. I don’t know if eureka moments have ever existed for me. You get better with experience, as you work. But art is a day-to-day, life-long pursuit. I’m a workhorse. I hone, and keep-on.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

I came out relatively late - 29 or 30. Which is even astounding to me, considering where I’m at now. But that time has given me a reflectiveness, an ability to consider and not take that new found freedom for granted. The previous album had a track entitled “Low Everlasting” - very much a coming-to-terms with being a gay man, getting sick of that self-hatred, and a moving beyond.

On this album, “Bronze Medallion,” a narrative song speaking to the fear of a boy having those feelings awakened in a change room at a pool, literally and figuratively treading water to stay alive. “Two Concentrics” is about fighting for a relationship, a gay one, despite the difficulty, be it internally within oneself, or outside forces telling you it’s wrong.

I’m not one to find campiness compelling, I find party music, for the most part, vapid. So in that sense, my identity informs my writing in that I’m not hearing the songs that would speak to my struggles - I simply had to express those because no one else has.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Do you mean, thematically? or creatively? To find something that covers both … ultimately, there’s a level of dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction in the art that’s presented to me, with the milquetoast music that’s pumped out, with corporate entities running everything.

But also that dissatisfaction within myself, to not allow myself to be complacent, to express a sentiment that’s difficult to articulate, to do something with the meagre time I have on the planet.

That even comes through lyrically in many aspects.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

I’m not certain I can see this binary you’re asking about. Are originality and perfection at odds? I can’t say that either are a big concern for me, to be honest. But speaking to that, I don’t believe any of these terms you’re mentioning exist at all. The sheer notion of someone claiming originality, is such hubris, and that idea to claim something as original only reveals one who is not well-read.

As a digger, as a collector, as a hunter for hidden gems, I am constantly looking for both something fresh, or something great lost in the past. I’m uncertain there is a music of the future, but rather pieces of the past put together in new ways.

Even with this record, there certainly are many delves into folk tradition, but in dealing with the “now” and with my experience, it is an amalgam of a lot of things, of past music, pieces I’ve read, conversations I’ve hard, and ideas out of the ether, but it becomes something new when it’s put together. That is a “continuing of tradition,” certainly, but I feel the entirety of artistic endeavour is still just that, a continuation.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

I actually began as a drummer. But with a constant desire to say something and having the need to write, being stuck behind a drum set was very confining. So from picking up guitar, using that as a tool felt so freeing. I could move a song as I felt compelled.

But having that drummer background really pushed how I approach songwriting, as I will always start rhythmically, thinking about tempo, about the feel. I feel that having a base understanding of the other instruments in a band, that really helps for a band to function, to know where all the players can go, and how a song can operate.